STARGATE ATLANTIS: Dead End (32 page)

And above them the storm howled a mocking cry of victory.

“So where the hell
are
they?” muttered McKay as he slowed and the Jumper and tried to bring it around in a loop. According to the HUD, he was over the designated coordinates, but the monitor he’d assigned to display life-sign readings remained stubbornly blank.

A new, chilling thought occurred to him. What if Sheppard’s plan had failed? What if Sanctuary had turned out to be some awful trap after all, or they had fallen into a crevasse on the way over?

A warning light blinked on; the power supply had dropped again. In desperation, he started to calculate the odds of following Sheppard’s last order and getting through the Stargate on his own. He couldn’t be sure the others were even alive and, if they were, he couldn’t be expected to find them in such conditions. And the power was going down. And…

He shook his head, disgusted with himself. While there was a milliamp of power left in the Jumper, he would use it to find the team. They would do the same for him. No one gets left behind. Isn’t that what they always said?

With a slight tremor in his hands, McKay nudged the Jumper downwards. Maybe if he got closer to the surface he’d pick up their life signs. Watching the altimeter readings like a hawk, he gently eased the Jumper into a lower flight pattern. The ice rushed up to meet him terrifyingly fast and through the occasional tears in the storm clouds, he saw blank sheets of white streaking beneath him. McKay’s palms were sweaty, his heart beating fast. He began to wonder how much longer he could keep this up without having some kind of coronary episode.

Then he saw it. Just a flicker, almost a ghost of a reading. He’d passed it, and as soon as it appeared it vanished again. McKay immediately pulled the Jumper around for another pass. It responded erratically, and almost fell into a tumble. Grappling with the controls, he gradually got it back on the level. No more sudden moves. That was best left to the experts.

More carefully, he coaxed the Jumper back around. Despite all his scientific training, he found himself willing the equipment to help him out. He flew as low as he dared, scouring the HUD for anything at all. There was nothing. Maybe the readings had been an anomaly? His euphoria began to dissolve. Then he saw them again — three signals, barely moving, just beneath him.

“Yes!” He punched the air. “Yes!”

But his exuberance lost him control of the Jumper, and it pitched to one side. “Damn!” He tried to pull up, but the Jumper’s inertial compensators were far from perfect and it jerked into a too-steep climb and almost stalled. Auxiliary thrusters whined into action, but it wasn’t enough. The Jumper flipped onto its side, and started to plummet earthwards.

“What’s that?” cried Ronon, roused from his deathly stupor by a shadow in the sky.

He shook his head, flinging snow in every direction. Focus. Painfully, he hauled himself to his feet. “There’s something out there.”

Teyla rolled over in the snow, looking as content as a child in her bed. Her limbs were floppy, and the snow was beginning to mass against her. Sheppard was little better. The cords between them had come loose.

“C’mon!” cried Ronon, shaking Teyla. He dragged her to her knees.

She looked up at him blearily. “Let me sleep…”

The words were fatal. Ronon felt the drag on his fatigued limbs like they did. He could hear the siren voice within him, urging him to give in, end the pain, collapse into the snow.

“No!” he growled. “There’s something out there! Get up!”

He yanked her roughly to her feet. For a moment, she looked furious. Then something seemed to kindle inside her and the old Teyla returned. “What did you see?”

“Dunno,” he said, reaching for Sheppard’s slumped figure. “Help me get him up. We gotta move.”

“Where?” yelled Teyla. Even as she finished speaking, there was a roar from above them. Something big, black against the skirling grey of the sky, hurtled earthwards. It flew low over their heads and was lost in the white-out ahead.

“There!” said Ronon. He started to run.

McKay acted instinctively. He punched the panel, gave a flurry of mental commands, shouted out orders. When that failed, he resorted to the final tool in his repertoire — letting go of the controls and cradling his head in his hands.

With a crunch, the Jumper hit the ground. McKay was thrown forward hard in his seat as it skidded across the ice. The world whirled around him for a minute, then everything slowed.

The Jumper came to a standstill. Gingerly, McKay opened his eyes and peered at the control panel. All systems were still active. Thank God. Hands shaking, he returned to the life-sign signals. They were still there, even fainter than before, maybe a hundred meters away from where the Jumper had come down.

Clambering into the rear bay he scrambled into his fur clothing again. There was no guarantee that the others had seen his descent in such weather, and if they had missed him and kept walking then all would have been for nothing.

Quickly, clumsily, McKay pulled the hides over his standard fatigues. They smelled even worse than the last time he’d worn them. Once fully clad, he took a deep breath, and prepared to lower the rear door. His hand hesitated as he took a look at the sensor readings again. The wind was blowing at ridiculous speeds, visibility was close to zero, and the temperature wasn’t even worth thinking about. Opening the door was very silly, as silly as anything he’d ever done in the Pegasus galaxy.

McKay sighed, and pressed the a button on the improvised door release mechanism. When he finally found the others, he thought to himself, they had better be grateful.

The rear door juddered open, and immediately a storm of snow shot into the narrow space. Within a second, every surface was covered in a layer of white. The wind was mind-blowing, and once inside it began to rock the Jumper like a toy. McKay grabbed a bulkhead for support and staggered forward. He couldn’t see a thing beyond the entrance to the vessel. His heart quailed and he hesitated, clinging to the fragile hull. He couldn’t go out. He just couldn’t.

“About damn time!” came a muffled shout from the void.

Three gray figures emerged from the white-out, staggering against the force of the wind.

“Ronon!” cried McKay, rushing forward. Sheppard, Teyla and Ronon stumbled into the rear bay, barely visible beneath the snow that clung to their clothing. Once inside the rear bay, they collapsed.

“Close the door!” yelled Ronon.

McKay hurried to comply, struggling to find the closing mechanism in the swirling confusion. Eventually, his fingers located the control panel and he activated the switch. The door slammed upwards, locking out the maelstrom. The noise was reduced to a booming rumble.

“All right, that was
too
close,” Sheppard’s voice was alarmingly slurred. “Anyone else feel their fingers?”

McKay frowned. “We’re not out of this yet,” he said. “I don’t want to hurry you, but most of the readings here are somewhere close to critical and I don’t even want to think about what’s happening to the Stargate in our absence.”

“Just gimme a minute, will ya?” The Colonel looked horribly fatigued. McKay could only imagine what a few hours in that storm must have been like. But there was no time to rest. He looked at Ronon, who made to speak, but then the Jumper was rocked by a massive gust. It tipped to one side. McKay had difficulty keeping his feet, then fell back heavily as a series of amber lights flickered across the HUD display.

“Minute up,” Sheppard groaned, climbing painfully to his feet, beginning to strip off his sodden furs. “Just don’t
expect first-class service here.”

Weir walked into the Operations Center, just as she had done every couple of hours since the databurst had been sent. It had become a ritual, increasingly devoid of hope. But it had to be done.

“Anything?” she asked Zelenka.

Just as always, Radek shook his head. Each time, he looked a little wearier, a little less full of life.

“Nothing,” he said. Weir looked at the empty Stargate below. It gazed back up at her, vacant and hollow. Every time she looked at it, she imagined the addresses whirling around the rim, the sudden burst of a new event horizon. Staring at it too long played tricks on you. She let her gaze return to Zelenka.

“How long do you think they could last in that climate?” she asked. “Have we run any models?”

Zelenka shook his head. “Not enough data. We have the readings from the MALP, but I don’t know what good it would do to speculate. We can’t reach them. We must wait.”

“Keep running the sensor tests,” she said. “We’re not giving up yet. Let me know if you get anything. I don’t care how small.”

Zelenka nodded.

“Will do,” he said, but his voice was empty.

The team clambered into the cockpit, taking their usual places and strapping in. McKay sat back against the hard seat-back with some pleasure. Sheppard brought up the controls quickly.

“So what happened out there?” said McKay. “Did it go to plan?”

“Another time, Rodney,” said Sheppard wearily. “Just sit back and enjoy the flight.”

With a sudden surge, the Jumper powered smoothly into the air once more. Unlike Rodney’s chaotic ascent, this time it traced a straight line into the storm-driven sky, the power increasing steadily as Sheppard deftly managed the power fluctuations. The Jumper turned in a wide arc and headed back towards the Stargate.

“Coming up on the Stargate now,” said Sheppard. “Anything I should know about, Rodney?”

“Aside from the fact that it might already be at the bottom of a crevasse?”

“Right. Anything
useful
?”

“Just keep us near to the ice. At best, it will have sunk further since we were last there. The closer you can hug the ground, the easier our passage will be.”

Sheppard shook his head and dipped the Jumper further towards the planet’s surface. “Sure, piece of cake,” he said.

McKay didn’t reply, but the Jumper noticeably slowed and the altitude continued to fall. In the rare gaps between the driving snow, McKay saw flashes of the ice speeding below them. It was happening. This was the important moment. And there was so much to get right.

“Remember what I told you about the module!” McKay said, aware that getting into the Stargate was only part of their task. “You’ll need to activate it straightaway. A second too late, and we’ll be threading through the anomaly again.”

“Don’t need to remind me,” said Sheppard. “Dialing the gate now. Hold tight folks. We’re going in — see you on the other side.”

McKay screwed his eyes shut, then opened them again. It was hard to decide which way was worse.

The Jumper dropped sharply. They were racing along. Sheppard remained silent, looking at the figures on the HUD intently. Teyla seemed barely conscious and Ronon said nothing.

And then, as if Khost wanted to give them a view to remember it by, the cloud cover broke. They were in the open, hurtling earthwards. The Stargate was directly in front of them, only partly obscured by the tearing flurries of snow and ice, and its surface boiled with the massive contained energies of the event horizon. The ZPM had kicked in. The wormhole was open.

But the power unleashed was doing dangerous things to the ice around it; there were jagged cracks all around the base. The gate itself was still above ground, but only just. As they plunged towards it, dark lines were radiating out across the plain. The Stargate was going down.

“Faster!” McKay yelled. Sheppard didn’t need to be told. As the Stargate tottered on the brink, he poured on the power and the Jumper hurled itself forward. McKay was thrown back in his seat, his heart pounding. Cracks opened, fissures yawned, and the ice floe collapsed.

The Stargate plunged into the abyss.

“We’ve got something!”

Zelenka’s voice cracked with excitement. Around him, scientists scrambled to get at a monitor. Down in the gate room, the landing bay was flooded with light. The event horizon had formed.

“Try to feed power to the link!” cried Zelenka. “I don’t care what readings you’re getting, we need to keep it open!”

The Atlantis squads swung into action. The medical team was already on its way to the gate room. Marines snapped to combat alertness, just in case. But they all knew what was coming through. Or, more accurately, they all knew what they
wanted
to come through.

Weir arrived, out of breath. “What is it?” she demanded. ”Do you have them?”

“Don’t know yet,” said Zelenka. “But the wormhole is from Dead End, or I’m a Slovak!”

Elizabeth raced over to the balcony and Zelenka turned back to the screen. The numbers were all over the place; this was definitely no normal transit. For a moment it looked as if they would lose the signal. Then it came back. Then it dimmed again.

“Come on, Rodney,” he breathed, gripped by the fluctuating readings. “Come
on
.”

The top of the Jumper screamed as they hit the falling gate, metal scraping away. It was enough. Though battered and listing, they were inside the event horizon.

“Now!” screamed McKay. “Route the power!”

For a moment, the Jumper viewscreen was filled with a confused pool of energy. It looked horribly like the tunnel of plasma they had seen before.

McKay felt the contents of his stomach rise.

“I’m losing power, Rodney!” shouted Sheppard.

McKay leapt from his seat. “This should be
working
!” he wailed. “Did you trip the Zelenka module?”